● 05.28.09

● Links 28/05/2009: KOffice 2.0.0 is Out

Posted in News Roundup at 6:35 pm by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• Elastix is a complete GNU/Linux distribution with Asterisk, DHADI, Openfire, Postfix and many other free software packages. It has a user-friendly interface that integrates the best tools available for Asterisk-based PBXs, as well as its own set of utilities which allows the creation of third party modules. The software was created by PaloSanto Solutions, an IT company from Ecuador, and released to the public for the first time in March 2006. Elastix has a good support for telephony hardware … you can see the complete list at their hardware compatibility list.

• As you can see there are many reasons to switch from Windows to Linux, some good, some bad. What you need to realize is that a lot of things are better in Linux than Windows, but that better also means different. You should not expect Linux to be an exact copy of Windows. If you recognize yourself in some of the good reasons above I suggest that you continue reading this blog! Next week I will explain what is a Linux distribution, something you will want to know in order to get the right Linux for you. The week after I will present some of the disadvantages of Linux.

• ZaReason is preparing to expand its portfolio of Ubuntu systems — including a new server and netbook, according to CEO Cathy Malmrose. But that’s not all. US-based ZaReason also continues its push deeper into the European computer market.

• As a matter of fact, Linux terminal servers are well known for their uptime and accessibility. Also, Linux is also well known for working out ways to work with and communicate with other systems. so you can have an AS400 client on a Linux desktop as easily as you can on a Windows desktop.

• If smooth-as-silk memory sharing and file caching bring joy to your heart, you know you’re a Linux geek. And if you’re a Linux geek, there’s apparently no time like the summertime to indulge in the sheer pleasure of playing with cool stuff in the Linux universe. Some generous bloggers have tagged some of the shiniest treasures for us. What other gems are out there, friends? We’d love to know.

• For me, the highlight is the following:

• Developers appear to be shifting away from Microsoft Windows to Linux and Mac OSX for their development operating system. 26.9% of respondents cite Linux was as primary desktop operating system, representing a 7 percentage point increase from 2007. Though Windows is still the dominant development OS at 64%, it has decreased 10 percentage points from 2007. The most popular Linux variant of choice among developers is Ubuntu, which accounts for over half of Linux respondents. Mac OSX has increase to 6.9% from 3.5% in 2007.

• Q. My netbook came with SUSE Linux, but I want to use Ubuntu Linux. What’s the easiest way to change?

• A. Swapping in Ubuntu Linux is not that difficult, and there is even a version called Ubuntu Netbook Remix that is optimized just for smaller hardware like a mini-notebook PC.

• According to Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, the netbook-remix version of the system includes a better user interface, faster start-up times, and improved power management for the smaller computers. Like the standard edition of Ubuntu, the netbook remix includes the Mozilla Firefox browser and open-source software for e-mail, instant messaging, digital photos and audio, and word processing.

• Imagine what would happen if a generation of school kids was raised, from an early age, to be Linux, OpenOffice.org and Gimp users?

• Tech Republic’s Gary Marshall, however, thinks Moblin has to be stopped – now. Why? Because he’s afraid developers (and the inevitable Moblin remixes) are going to ruin a good thing. “…naturally, somebody’s going to bugger it up. Of course they will. It’s Linux!” Later he states “Again and again, we’ve seen early promise ruined because people don’t know when to stop.”

• Along comes Sun’s VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/)… totally cross-platform (there are versions for Windows, OSX, Linux, and Solaris, and even has an SDK). Totally free. Easy to set up and use. And extremely powerful.

• But a translation of the original Unix ideal is Linux, and it has rapidly become the leader in business use. In a never-ending battle to ease costs, a system that is freely available to the public to use, redistribute, change, translate, and adapt is the ultimate in economical and secure computing.

• Linux is a free Unix-like operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds. Developed under the GNU General Public License, the source code for Linux is freely available to everyone who knows what to do with it. According to IBM, Linux is currently the fastest-growing operating system. The beauty of Linux is that, because it is freely modifiable, it can be adapted to any computing purpose. Chances are good, your cell phone has Linux embedded. Linux is now the system of choice to run gaming consoles such as the Sony PlayStation. Yet Linux is just as at-home running a mainframe supercomputer at NASA.

Audio

• In this week’s, massively oversized episode: We interview the Linux Foundation’s Community Manager Brian Proffitt and talk about the Cisco/FSF settlement, the RIAA dissing the FSF, Microsoft and the Linux Foundation actually agreeing on something and much more.

• In this episode: Our favourite TuxRadar comments so far, how can we help convert people from Windows and a special feature on netbooks.

Events

• Can grid technology give your company a competitive advantage? The Grid Solutions Track organized by the EGEE Business Forum, 5 June 2009, during LinuxDays 2009 is designed to illustrate how IT strategists from both the private and public sectors can benefit by adopting grid computing.

• “EGEE is now in a position to take a variety of solutions to the market through several commercial companies offering gLite based solutions,” says Steven Newhouse, Technical Director of EGEE. “This ‘Grid Solutions’ track is a prime opportunity to showcase what EGEE and gLite has to offer.”

• Only 16 days remain until June 13th, the date SouthEast LinuxFest makes its debut in Clemson, South Carolina. The one-day conference features an impressive list of speakers that will be sure to fill the Hendrix Student Center at Clemson University. The entrance is free but, if you want to support the project, you can do that by opting for a $50 admission fee, for which price you also receive a T-Shirt or drink tickets. For the event, the Comfort Inn Hotel was contracted and offers discounts if you make reservations until May 30th.

• Since 1994, the Linux Kongress has been held annually in Germany, with the occasional detour to other lovely European locales. In 2008, Linux Kongress-goers visited the ancient and beautiful city of Hamburg, and apparently liked it so much they didn’t want to go home — conference organizers have again chosen Hamburg as the site of the Linux Kongress, to be held September 22 – 25, 2009. Speaking of organizers, the conference is again being orchestrated by the German Unix User Group. OSDevCon, the OpenSolaris Developer Conference, will also be held in Hamburg, concurrent with the Kongress.

Server

• “We could have failed against proprietary counterparts if we had used a box approach with enterprise Linux,” feels Satish Mohan, head, global engineering centre, Red Hat India. But using the ‘value proposition’ approach with ‘service beyond vanilla product’ and access to ecosystem has worked in favor for Enterprise Linux, he tells.

• In the OS version of enterprise solutions, there are no hassles like upgrade investments or heavy exit costs etc. That’s why there is a good push from all sectors like BFSI, manufacturing or government towards early adoption of Enterprise Linux, Mohan shares.

• Penguin Computing, the leading provider of HPC cluster solutions today announced it has formed an OEM agreement with Applied Biosystems, a division of Life Technologies Corporation. Applied Biosystems, a leading provider of genomic analysis sequencing systems, will bundle the cluster management solution Scyld ClusterWare with the SOLiD™ System, recently named the #1 Life Science Innovation of 2008 by the Life Science industry publication The Scientist.

• Panasas, Inc., the leading provider of storage for the world’s most performance-intensive applications, today announced that the company has partnered with IBM to develop integrated support and optimized application performance when new Panasas ActiveStor storage systems are configured with IBM Power Systems running Linux. The combination provides outstanding performance levels and is an ideal solution for data-intensive applications in many industries including aerospace, energy, finance, government, life sciences, consumer products, and manufacturing.

• IBM has officially launched its Smart Market effort in the United States. In addition to the pilot in India, U.S. small business customers can now buy the appliance-like IBM Smart Cubes that run IBM i or Linux–but the operating system is the last thing IBM is promoting with its new Smart Market efforts.

• Separately on Wednesday, HP rolled out improvements to its desktop-based Windows and Linux thin clients that will improve security of the devices, and simplify setup and integration with VMware View and Citrix XenDesktop virtualization platforms. While HP is integrating with third-party virtualization tools, Tad Bodeman, HP’s thin client marketing director, denies a rumor that HP is exiting the virtual desktop infrastructure market altogether.

Kernel Space

• Dan Walsh and Eric Paris have been working on an SELinux “sandbox” which Walsh describes on his weblog. The basic idea is to use SELinux to restrict the kinds of actions a user application can perform. This would allow users to run untrusted programs or handle untrusted input in a more secure manner.

• With the Linux 2.6.30 kernel being prepped for release in early June, we have set out to provide a few benchmarks of this latest Linux kernel to see how it compares to its two earlier predecessors. While this new kernel may offer support for new file-systems (NILFS2, in particular), support for LZMA/BZIP2 kernel image compression, a new CPU architecture (Microblaze) and many other changes, are there any major performance regressions or improvements like we have spotted with our previous Linux kernel benchmarks?

• [...]

• While this round of kernel testing was brief with just three kernels and eleven tests, it does seem that particularly when it comes to disk operations there are improvements with the Linux 2.6.30 kernel, which should not come as a surprise. There were also a few performance regressions, however. Beyond that the tests show few other changes with this kernel upgrade. If you would like to run your own Linux kernel benchmarks, try out the Phoronix Test Suite, which is our open-source software that will allow you to run and automate almost any test on Linux, OpenSolaris, *BSD, and Mac OS X operating systems.

Applications

• gLabels Label, Business Card, and Postcard Creator

• [...]

• Hugin, Photo Panorama Creator

• [...]

• Blender, Cross-Platform 3D Creator

• If you’re wondering whether Guake and Yakuake are Polynesian happy mushrooms, you’re a bit off mark. These are Linux command line terminals, modified to behave like the console in the popular First Person Shooter (FPS) Quake. Hence, the funny names.

• The open source Chromium project, which serves as the basis for Google’s Chrome web browser, has reached alpha status on the Linux platform. Ars takes a look at the Linux port’s progress and functionality.

• This game does not use the Quake engine. It runs on Blender Game Engine and is available for all major operating systems. Blender is a powerful, popular 3D modeling and rendering graphics software, which was used to create the stunning landscapes and lifelike behavior of the characters in the game.

• Elisa Media Center has been one of those projects that I really want to like and has almost been there for a long time. It did a lot of cool stuff and did it simply, without the need to rip out or supplement core technologies in your existing Gnome desktop. I kept trying it, but it always lacked something that I really wanted, so I would give it up after a few hours. It continued to move forward quickly, though.

KOffice

• The KOffice team is extremely pleased to finally announce version 2.0.0 of KOffice. This release marks the end of more than 3 years of work to port KOffice to Qt 4 and the KDE 4 libraries and, in some cases, totally rewrite the engine of the KOffice applications.

• The idea of an application that supports third-party extensions and add-ons users can download and install in one click may be more applicable to Web browsers than office suites, but the developers at the open source KOffice project have developed such an architecture where all components are modular. TechWorld interviews the marketing coordinator for KOffice, Inge Wallin, to find out where this lesser-known of the open source office suites is headed now version 2.0.0 has arrived and what excites its developers. Building an easy, intuitive, cross-platform, and extensible platform like Firefox is high on the agenda.

Distributions

• I run slackware-current on my main workstation and I should keep up to date more often than I do. Anyway, on May 8th Patrick switched over to the new compression format of xz, based on an LZMA compression algorithm. This significantly reduces the size of compressed packages. Great stuff. Anyway, I noticed this because when I ran slackpkg upgrade-all it continuously failed. I was a bit perplexed but it’s an easy fix if you are a bit late.

Red Hat

• The CentOS Development Team announced today the immediate availability of their CentOS 5.3 Live CD Linux distribution. This version is based on the previously released CentOS 5.3 for i386 processor architectures. In order to make the ISO fit on a single 700 MB CD, the Emacs, K3B and Scribus applications had to be removed. Still, these can easily be installed through the “yum install” command, even while running the Live environment.

• RedHat, one of the biggest contributor to open source and Linux, proved the world that the Open Source service based model is profitable. RedHat introduces all the exiting new technologies in Fedora, the community driven distribution sponsored by RedHat. These technologies will be integrated into the official RetHat distribution after they are mature enough. The technologies like udev, upstart, SELinux, pulseaudio, Plymouth, Xen and KVM are first introduced (if I remember correctly) in Fedora and then later integrated into various other distributions. I’ve not used Fedora as my main desktop, but I always try every release of Fedora to get a feel of the new technologies.

Mint

• Clement Lefebvre from the Mint development team has announced the release of Linux Mint 7 (code named Gloria). Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution that aims to be user friendly and provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including support for DVD playback, Java, plug-ins and media codecs. The release is based on Ubuntu 9.04 (aka Jaunty Jackalope), the 2.6.28 Linux Kernel, X.org 7.4 and GNOME 2.26.

• There are other Mint utilities, such as mintBackup and mintNanny, but the bottom line is, if you are looking for a solid Linux distribution, you can’t do better than Ubuntu, and if you want it to be better packaged and easier to use, then Linux Mint is definitely worth a look.

Devices/Embedded

• I’m in search of Linux–which sounds odd since it seems that I should be able to find all the Linux I’d ever want but I want to know about your favorite Linux gadget, project, invention, software, innovation or appliance. I want to know which ones are most important to you–which ones you’re passionate about and which ones deserve some attention in this blog. Here’s your chance to bring a little-known Linux-oriented business or project into the light.

• Here’s a device that started out as a firewall and ended up as a powerful embedded development platform. It’s based around an ARM CPU and includes an SDK to let you develop your own tools.

• How important are flexibility and a rich feature set to you? If these elements are your top considerations, then the Astaro Security Gateway should be high on your short list. With roots in the Linux world, the Astaro is a serious firewall with serious capabilities for a distributed enterprise UTM box.

• Qnap Systems announced a 2.5-inch drive variation on its Linux- and Intel Atom-based network-attached storage (NAS) devices, called the SS-439 Pro Turbo NAS. In other NAS news, Asus is readying an Eee-branded NAS device, similarly running Linux on an Atom, says an industry report.

• Netronome announced new multi-core “network flow processors” that are backward-compatible with Intel’s IXP28xx, but claimed to offer over twice the MIPS. The Linux-compatible NFP-32xx system-on-chips scale from 16 to 40 cores, offer 20Gbps throughput, and provide a programmable dataplane, virtualization, and security processing, says the company.

Phones

• His comments on the Pre are believed to be the first indicating other carriers are eyeballing Palm’s last-chance smartphone. Palm is set to launch the Pre on June 6 under an exclusive US supply deal. O2 has inked itself as the UK’s sole distributor, with plans to punt the handset sometime before Christmas.

• The Android-based HTC Magic will be available for free (as in $0 upfront) on a $99 cap plan from 3.

• Minor differences between the two are eclipsed by the broader functionality shared by the Linux-based Android 1.5 “Cupcake” operating system which brings iPhone-like functionality, including Google Maps and Latitude, e-mail, IM, YouTube and the Android Market for thousands of third-party applications.

• And while the wise foresee ARM-based netbooks running some flavor of Linux as the long-term solution for business users’ portable computing fix, the (arguably) foolish among us hunger for even smaller devices. After all, today’s smartphones look more and more like computers, with keyboards, browsers, storage, pointing devices, and even applications.

• SDG Systems is shipping a version of its ruggedized Trimble Nomad PDA that runs Android 1.5. In other Android news, photos of an Android-based, AT&T-destined HTC “Lancaster” smartphone have appeared on the web, and another report says that China Mobile will soon sell HTC’s Magic phone.

• In my previous piece about Palm and the potential for webOS to be used for derivative tablet-sized devices, I talked a bit about Google’s problem with having to brand Android and finding a major device manufacturer with brand and sex appeal to attract customers in order to make a major commercial success of the platform.

Sub-notebooks

• Assuming Google can buckle down and give Android the same kind of air time in the mainstream media that Microsoft will give Windows 7, it could be an interesting competition. A competition with plenty of hills and valleys as each platform shows off its best.

• Building on that insight, one thing that might be useful would be to create a site specifically for those running Windows XP on netbooks, with a range of open source software that’s particularly suitable – because it’s free, requires little resources and is fast.

Linpus

• When netbooks first came out from Acer and Asus, they came with a Linux operating system from a (then unknown) small Linux vendor called Linpus. Linux on netbooks is now more common and there are other Linux distribution choices (and Windows too), but Linpus remains and is now gearing up for a new release based on the Moblin v2 standard for Intel Atom processors.

• Taiwanese Linux distributor Linpus Technologies plans to make a version of Moblin 2.0 available for download next week, a move timed to coincide with the annual Computex hardware exhibition in Taipei.

• Linpus will show off a new version of its Linpus Linux Lite distribution based on Moblin 2.0 for the first time, including versions based on user interfaces designed by Linpus and Intel, the company said in a notice posted on its Web site.

OLPC

• Branching out to Australia two years ago, the organisation was established in the US to provide disadvantaged primary school children access to educational resources. So far, OLPC has trialed the notebook scheme across Oceanic nations including Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

• Rwanda is set to become home to the pilot learning centre for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project in Africa due to its outstanding progress in promoting the child user friendly computer on the continent.

• The centre to be located at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) to be known as the OLPC Learning Centre will be launched on June 9 and it is aimed at supporting Rwanda achieve its objectives of promoting ICT in Education but also act as a reach out centre for the whole of Africa.

Free Software/Open Source

• Google has mocked up a version of YouTube built around the HTML5 video tag, playing mini-movies inside a browser sans plug-ins.

• OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source open software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers.

• As promised, below you will find our recipe for the TED, The Energy Detective hack that enabled us to publish our electricity use on the Energy Circle site, starting Earth Day. Thanks to Peter Murray for putting this together. If you take this on, good luck! Please report back to let us know how it goes.

• The FreeSWITCH team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 1.0.4pre8. This latest release is the most stable and secure version of FreeSWITCH to date. All are encouraged to update as soon as possible. The latest files are available at files.freeswitch.org.

• I’ve heard it a dozen times: “We’re going to release this app as open source, as soon as we clean it up.” It’s always made me wonder what, exactly, needs to be cleaned up, and what it looked like beforehand. The implication is that the “Before” picture is something of a mess.

• I shall finish off with a quote by a representative of the natural sciences, a mathematician to be more exact, who has taken the consequence of scientific accountability and, as the project leader of the free software application TeXmacs, has presented the following conclusions:

• Improving the usability of Drupal is very important. Yesterday, I wrote about the progress that was made on Drupal 7 usability — the community has made a ton of incremental improvements, while Mark and Leisa have been preparing mockups and wireframes that provide significant over-arching improvements to Drupal’s ease of use. Combined, I believe these efforts could make Drupal 7 a great release. A release that the Drupal project needs since our competitors are catching up in terms of functionality and flexibility. Likewise we need to catch up in terms of design and usability. It is my belief that we can develop a user experience for our project that is game changing, and that completely resets people’s expectations both for Drupal and our competitors.

Business

• Alfresco Software Inc., the leader in open source enterprise content management (ECM), and ECM consulting and software company Armedia today announced that Alfresco CTO John Newton will be delivering the keynote address to kick off Armedia’s one-day Open Source ECM Seminar, to be held June 9, 2009 at the Delta Airlines headquarters in Atlanta, Ga.

• I’ve suggested before that open source provides an efficient way to distribute software and attract new customers. No, it currently doesn’t generate Oracle-worthy billions in profits, but it wouldn’t need to for Oracle to make good use of it.

Programming

• As your site amasses content — be it stories, SKUs, or statistics — a tailored, effective, and exacting search engine becomes increasingly vital. Imagine a bookstore that doesn’t index its tomes by title or author, or a clothing retailer that doesn’t index garments by size. Without search, each site is useless. In general, the quality and relevance of search results makes or breaks a site.

• Just five years ago, Vic Gundotra argued that web apps could never rival their desktop brethren. But that’s when he worked for Microsoft. He works for Google now. And he sees things quite differently.

• In 2004, Gundotra and his Microsoft team – responsible for driving developers to Windows – pointed to an application called Keyhole as a prime example of the sort of desktop goodness that could never be duplicated on the web. Then Google bought Keyhole, a Windows app that stitched satellite photos into a pan-and-zoom-able virtual landscape, and within months, it turned the app into a web service.

Leftovers

DRM

• Switching to the question of SpiralFrog’s DRM; some of the site’s users are bitter about losing their music. When SpiralFrog went dark, CEO Joe Mohen said that SpiralFrog’s music would be available for an additional 60 days. What Mohen meant was that if users visited the site on the last day the service operated and updated the DRM on their songs, they would have access for two months from that day.

• A UK researcher has spent years interviewing people about whether DRM has affected their ability to use content in ways ordinarily protected by the law. Surprise! It has, even leading one sight-impaired woman to piracy.

• It’s a well-known story by now: Europe, the US, and plenty of other countries have made it generally illegal to circumvent DRM, even when users want to do something legal with the content. Sure, it sounds bad and Ars complains about it all the time, but come on—do anticircumvention laws really prevent real people in the real world from doing real things with their content? Or are the complaints largely dreamed up by copyleft activists who would like nothing more than to see the term “intellectual property” disappear into the tentacled maw of Cthulhu?

Copyrights

• The Conference Board of Canada that was basically a cut and paste from various industry groups, Geist noticed that the report relied on some BSA data. So he asked for more info on how the BSA determined the “piracy” rate of software in Canada. How many people were surveyed? What was the methodology?

• Copyleft is not, in and of itself, a solution to the problem of inappropriately centralized services. It is not enough even if users are able to obtain a copy of the programs a server runs, if users generally can’t count on controlling the servers.

• Dave Title points our attention to a public elementary school in New York City (PS22) that is making news for putting together a chorus that sings various pop songs (and sings them well!).

• [...]

• But, of course, Title wonders how the RIAA feels about all of this:

• Charles Nesson writes an op-ed piece explaining why RIAA lawsuits targeting file-sharers is an abuse of the legal process, and that the real problem is the tension between “our antiquated copyright laws and the social reality of ‘digital natives,’” those that have grown up immersed in a digital world.

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